SK Innovation will start the world’s first commercial production of mid- and large-sized pouch-type NCM 811 batteries.. Starting in December this year, the new batteries will be supplied for the production of energy storage systems. For EVs, the company will begin supplying the batteries from the third quarter of 2018, it said. ..The batteries will be manufactured at SK Innovation’s battery production facilities in Seosan, where the company is constructing its fifth and sixth battery production lines to secure a total 3.9 gigawatt hours of battery production capacity.

The facility in Hungary will add 7.5 gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries to SK Innovation’s yearly battery production volume.

These are the cells for the M ercedes new EQ series of EVs. It's enough for about 100,000 cars annually. Only 20% of T esla's volume, but M ercedes is coming from nothing. It means pretty much all the production from the Korean plant will be used by Kia, mostly the new N iro EV.

Right now, SK Innovation runs six production lines at its plant in Seosan, South Chungcheong, where it can manufacture as much as 3.9 gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries per year. A spokesperson explained that the company will build a seventh production line by the second half of next year to expand the capacity to 4.7 gigawatt-hours per year.

Last edited by JejuSoul on Wed May 09, 2018 6:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

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SK Innovation announced on March 8 (local time) that the company held a groundbreaking ceremony for an EV battery factory in Komarom, Hungary. This plant is SK Innovation's first European battery manufacturing facility and is expected to play a key role as a bridgehead into the European market....SK Innovation is planning to start production and supply in earnest in early 2020 after the completion of the plant in the second half of 2019 after the stabilization of the facility, a trial run and product certification. In 2022, when all production lines are completed, electric car batteries of 7.5GWh will be annually produced.

Comparing the SK battery plant in Hungary with LG Chem's new battery plant in Wrocław, Poland, and Samsung SDI's new battery plant in Goed, Hungary

The LG plant will open in first half of 2018 and be complete by June 2020,. - LG Chem delays European battery megafactoryThis article suggests that LG Chem production started in Jan 2018. - LG Chem to supply battery packs for Jaguar’s first EVSK is investing 840.2 billion Korean won ($745.5m) whereas LG is investing 400 Korean billion won ( $355m)SK site is - 430,000 ㎡ compared to LG 41,300 ㎡ ( I think the LG area stated in the article is wrong)LG Chem does not say the output capacity of the factory -just that it can produce 100,000 batteries. The size of the battery is unknown.The article on megafactories states 5GWh. That is 10% the size of T esla's Gigafactory in Nevada. Rumour here suggests LG Chem will soon triple production to 300,000 cars. - Local EV battery makers expand into the EU

As of end-October 2016, 19,968 units of the Soul EV have been sold worldwide,

The most recent brand new Soul EV I have seen was at the 5th Jeju EV Expo in early May 2018. VIN *34202It seems that worldwide Soul EV sales are about 833 / month over the last few years. ( About 10,000 / year )Although sales have risen above 1000 / month recently.

The Seosan battery factory would need to provide 330 MWh of battery cells to make these 10,000 Soul EVs each year.

So how many 64kWh N iro EVs could be made in second half of this year given 4.7GWh of total production. And nothing is being sent to China for BAIC or to Germany for the M ercedes EQ. My guess is a maximum 30,000. So maybe 15,00 is reasonable. 5,000 in Korea and 10,000 to Norway.

The Soul EV is sold as used car in Norway, so you want see it in the Norwegian figures as a new car.

I think there are plenty of evidence that Kia is sending Soul EV to Germany for some days and then they are brought to Norway to be used and sold there. But it is not illegal and I don't see it as a emission scam. Just German Kia dealers that can't sell the Soul EV so they send them to the lucky Norwegians

-The Norwegian sales figures are done by the registration plates issued.If you look you will see Import on the right hand side. Nei means no. Ja means yes.The total sales for April 2018 is 447The current sales for May 2018 is 287I agree many of these are imported, but not all. Obviously there cannot be 751 imports.

More importantly 751 in Germany is greater than the total of Soul EVs sold in the whole of Europe.

The story about cars from Germany being trans-shipped to Norway has been discussed already. Two years ago! On page 1 of this thread.

Birkeland wrote:... Many of the EVs sold to Germany ends up in Norway. I live in Norway, and my car comes from Germany as part of a shipment of about 200 cars. The ship arrives at Germany where they are registered so Germany can fulfill an environmental quota of EVs. The next day, the ship continues to Norway where KIA dealership is getting the cars. The demand of KIA Soul EV in Norway has been so high (waiting time for up to 9 months), so KIA Norway are buying cars from other countries to take care of the demand. ....

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... the German PEV market always delivers surprises, and April was no exception, the Best Selling model last month was the Kia Soul EV (721 units), even if most units end up in Norway (It wouldn't be the first time), this was the best performance for the Kia in 28 months.

They list the numbers for the N iro PHEV separately, so the 721 doesn't include those. It's now harder to see how the sales of the Soul EV in Germany are greater than the sales for the entirety of Europe.

The German data is freely available each month from the German Federal Automobile Transport Agency (KBA)It is German only. Start here - https://www.kba.de/DE/Home/home_node.htmlClick Statistik then Fahrzeuge then Neuzulassungen then Monatliche NeuzulassungenFrom that page you can download a PDF file with all the months data.The 721 figure is correct, but the German Agency has no data showing how many cars are leaving the country.

Because of this I decided to look at the Norwegian data. Here is a chart that shows the total number of Kia Soul EVs in Norway broken down into those directly imported, and those 'sold' in another European country and then shipped into Norway a few days later. Here shown as imports.

The number of 'pre-sold' cars is far greater than I thought. We don't know where all these cars have been shipped from. Many are from Germany but I have seen reports that they are also coming from France, Spain ....

It means all the data on such sites such as ev-sales.blogspot.com is distorted. They only show the country the car was first sold in, and not where the car actually is.

SK Innovation said its growth is in line with the sales increase of electric cars that it supplies batteries to such as Kia Motors’ N iro plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and Soul electric vehicle and Hyundai Motor’s I oniq plug-in hybrid electric vehicle...